[deleted]
Unemployment in the U.S. Is Falling, So Why Isn’t Pay Rising?
41–50 of 149 posts
Re: Unemployment in the U.S. Is Falling, So Why Isn’t Pay Rising?
#42Uh, because we are all collectively being fleeced by a ruling class extracting obscene amounts of wealth from our work without doing anything useful themselves. Never fool yourself into thinking you'll get anything back from these vampires.
So if you were given 25 million dollars you would automagically make obscene amounts of money with no effort? History shows otherwise with a very high rate of bankruptcies from lottery winners.
What? "Ruling class" is not about how much you currently have, but how you got what you have and what are your means of obtaining more in the future. Winning a lottery is a one time happening, and we can write it off as a balance for the random chance of getting hit by a car.
Re: Unemployment in the U.S. Is Falling, So Why Isn’t Pay Rising?
#43Uh, because we are all collectively being fleeced by a ruling class extracting obscene amounts of wealth from our work without doing anything useful themselves. Never fool yourself into thinking you'll get anything back from these vampires.
We had a ruling class in the 90s as well, but wages increased. So the question is what is different about today?
The ruling class is much greedier than they were in the 90s.
Re: Unemployment in the U.S. Is Falling, So Why Isn’t Pay Rising?
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Explain to me the "value" of Goldman Sachs telling their customers to buy derivatives, while shorting them at the same time. Pretty please.
One, or even many examples of bad behavior does not invalidate the general argument of the wealthy creating value. Don't forget you're on a site owned by wealthy people whose day job is giving money to other people to bootstrap their companies. You don't get much more creating value than that.
Creating that value destroys the earth.
Re: Unemployment in the U.S. Is Falling, So Why Isn’t Pay Rising?
#45Uh, because we are all collectively being fleeced by a ruling class extracting obscene amounts of wealth from our work without doing anything useful themselves. Never fool yourself into thinking you'll get anything back from these vampires.
I completely agree that there is a ruling class, and that they extract an obscene amount of rent just because they can. I also happen to think they create a ton of value. I just don't believe that justifies them making us 'human capital'.
What about the fact that the average infiltration of technology for a company to utilize is higher than the 90s, so low to average skill, and even some high skill jobs are being exported to the billions of people willing to do the job for a fraction of the price.
Maybe just as many or more people are being employed just not in the U.S., and the pays of the people working overseas are lower relative to U.S. wages, but higher relative to the wages offered in the location of that persons job?
I feel like people are looking at the U.S. exclusively but in reality since the 90s we have to consider the other countries on this planet, as an average to normal way of utilizing job allocation resourcing as opposed to it just being large corporations that do this like in the 90s.
I'm not saying this method is overall good or stating opinions or whether i think its "right" or "wrong" as opposed to economics and how things have always worked , but it is a fact thats happening. Theres 400,000 people in China who have Engineering degrees or otherwise niche technical skill that are unemployed, and another 400k in the pipeline in Asia that are 12 yrs old taking Calculus and becoming trilingual.
I always wonder why we don't wonder why the average highschool student in the average city in the U.S. is less valuable than the average highschool student in the average city in Asia or India, instead of assuming the only reason we don't have the jobs we feel entitled to is because rich people are taking it away from us, when in reality theres really qualified hardworking people all around the world who would benefit from a fraction of the pay provided by jobs we had previous relative to the current living conditions.
The current living conditions being 400k unemployed Engineers and tech/manufactoring workers in Asia.
outside of simply being American, why are we entitled to jobs more than them, if theres a limited amount of jobs, and they are willing to do it for less because its better than Having a Masters Degree in Engineering and being homeless?
Re: Unemployment in the U.S. Is Falling, So Why Isn’t Pay Rising?
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
I completely agree that there is a ruling class, and that they extract an obscene amount of rent just because they can. I also happen to think they create a ton of value. I just don't believe that justifies them making us 'human capital'.
Explain to me the "value" of Goldman Sachs telling their customers to buy derivatives, while shorting them at the same time. Pretty please.
increasing market liquidity, sheesh
Re: Unemployment in the U.S. Is Falling, So Why Isn’t Pay Rising?
#47Uh, because we are all collectively being fleeced by a ruling class extracting obscene amounts of wealth from our work without doing anything useful themselves. Never fool yourself into thinking you'll get anything back from these vampires.
So if you were given 25 million dollars you would automagically make obscene amounts of money with no effort? History shows otherwise with a very high rate of bankruptcies from lottery winners.
Yes, one could put it in an S&P index fund and by all historical trends, they would make an average of 2 million per year (8%) without doing anything. That is an obscene amount of money. Or if you're more conservative, you could put it in bonds and still be making many times the average salary, still without doing anything.
(And lottery participants are highly likely to be less well informed about managing money, since otherwise they wouldn't be lottery participants.)
Re: Unemployment in the U.S. Is Falling, So Why Isn’t Pay Rising?
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Explain to me the "value" of Goldman Sachs telling their customers to buy derivatives, while shorting them at the same time. Pretty please.
One, or even many examples of bad behavior does not invalidate the general argument of the wealthy creating value. Don't forget you're on a site owned by wealthy people whose day job is giving money to other people to bootstrap their companies. You don't get much more creating value than that.
Beggars cant be choosers. You forgot to demonize the opposition as lazy welfare riders. :D
To add a little meat to this vampire of a political exchange. Nobody is interested in the usual defense mechanisms.. lets open the hard shell and look at the heart. And here it is:
"I know you are right, but i have just so much invested into the current system, and can with my family at debt-gunpoint mount no enthusiasm as i could once when i was a tweenager. Why should i throw my hat in a ring, who as history shows often tramples hats and wearers on both sides? And how many couch revolutionary's are there, who wave the banner on the internet, but would throw a fit, if somebody would occupy their parking lot in real life. "
Re: Unemployment in the U.S. Is Falling, So Why Isn’t Pay Rising?
#49Eight possible explanations and not a single mention of the word "deflation." The Japanese have a long history of low unemployment and deflation working together: http://www.tradingeconomics.com/japan/unemployment-rate Maybe the idea that lower unemployment always leads to inflation is just wrong. For now, wage decreases have been masked by cuts to employer-funded health insurance programs. Eventually, there will be…
Shouldn't deflation come with decreasing prices all around, not just wages ? because except for a few relative small sectors, it doesn't seem to be the case.
Re: Unemployment in the U.S. Is Falling, So Why Isn’t Pay Rising?
#50Well, if Labor is a function of supply and demand, then it tells us that supply of willing labor is happy to work at all, even if wages aren't rising. Turned around, in a market where people are desperate for work, corporations have no incentive to raise wages.
Still, this is overly simplistic. The problem in my mind is that unemployment rate is reflective only of those looking for work, and labor force participation rate is low. https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000
The result is that as employers' needs for people rise, they can siphon off those looking for work at current market rates, and then, (maybe), people from the non-participating group can gradually replenish the unemployed pool.
*
My own experience tells me that there is limited wage stagnation in modern high-skill jobs and that there is low unemployment there as well. In that market, wages seem to be rising, and talent seems to be scarce. (Read some recent earnings transcripts from companies like CDI that do staffing in these industries.)
On the lower or outdated skill market, though, companies have more people to choose from, likely lower transaction costs (non-benefits/salary jobs enable more employee turnover), and also slimmer margins. Why pay any more than they absolutely have to?
Where this becomes a real problem, though is that low-skill jobs are not even keeping place with inflation. As a result, real earning potential in many of these jobs is through the floor.
Personally, I look to the huge run in returns on capital in the equities market over the last few years as the primary cause. In many cases, historically low interest rates and fast growing equities prices have diverted efforts from business growth and innovations in the "core" to financial growth and innovations for the balance sheet. This will revert, at some point. But, as we have seen elsewhere in HN over the last few days, there is a large entrenched "Business Class" that knows far more about financial optimization and asset allocation than they do about the businesses that they actually run.